‘If his wife caught him philandering she’d be spitting chips she’d be that annoyed,’ said Miss Landlock.
As there was little to do on the ship and the voyage was a long one, I was treated each day to endless speculation about the Captain’s habits, admiration for his many virtues and advice as to what they should buy him as a present when we got to our first (and only) port of call. They looked forward to this day with great eagerness — not, I think, because they wanted to go ashore, but in order to purchase their hero’s gift. After much argument, it was decided to buy him a sweater. As the price of such a garment was in doubt, it was decided that each lady was to give two pounds and I, nobly, said I would make up any difference. Having settled this thorny problem amicably, instant warfare broke out when we came to the problem of colour. White was impractical, red was too garish, brown was too sombre, green did not match his eyes and so on, interminably. In the end, before the ladies actually came to blows over this issue, I said that I, with the extraordinary cunning I used to entrap the wild denizens of the jungle, would extract from the Captain his favourite colour. When I eventually returned with the entirely spurious news that the Captain liked oatmeal, the ladies were disappointed but took it well. Another world war had been averted.
Eventually the great day dawned and the ship put into port. The ladies had been up at dawn, as excited as children on Christmas morning. They had been flitting from cabin to cabin in their dressing gowns with shrill cries of ‘Marjorie, have you got a safety pin you could lend me?’, ‘Agatha, do you think these beads will go with my blue?’ or ‘You couldn’t lend me a bra, could you — this one’s gone and broken its strap.’ Eventually, clad in their best, straw hats ablaze with artificial flowers, so redolent with powder and perfume that they could be smelt a hundred yards upwind, their eyes shining, their faces wreathed in excited smiles, they were all packed like a flowerbed into the tender and set off for shore and their great adventure.
In spite of their pleas and entreaties, I had decided not to go with them. It was a wise decision, for the idea — although I did not tell them this — of going shopping with eleven women, all hell bent on getting the best for their idol, filled me with alarm. Besides, I was in the middle of a book and so I thought I would work quietly in my cabin and order a drink and a sandwich for lunch. Unfortunately, it was not to be. I had barely started work when there was a knock on the cabin door. It was the Chief Officer. He was a man of about thirty, I suppose, with tightly clipped corn-gold hair, a rather heavy face and blue eyes without any expression in them. He had always struck me as being polite, efficient, but a bit on the dour side, compared with the Captain’s charming personality.
The Captain’s compliments,’ he said. ‘He did not see you going ashore with the ladies. The Captain wishes to know if you are unwell?’
‘No, I’m perfectly well, thank you. I just decided to stay on board and finish my work.’
Then the Captain says will you do him the honour of having lunch with him?’
I was somewhat taken aback, but there was really nothing I could do but accept.
‘Tell the Captain I will be delighted,’ I said.
‘Quarter to one in the bar,’ said the Chief Officer, and went off.
So at quarter to one I drifted into the bar to find the Captain sipping at a glass of pale sherry, with a whole pile of parchment-like papers on the bar in front of him. He shook my hand formally, ordered me a drink and then perched back on his stool, like a pixie on a mushroom top.
‘As soon as I saw you were not going ashore,’ he said, ‘I felt I must ask you to lunch. I did not like to think of you lunching alone.’
‘You are most kind, Captain,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact, the reason I did not go ashore is because our ladies wanted to do some shopping. I felt that to spend the day shopping with eleven ladies would be more than my nerves could stand.’
‘Just shopping with one lady is a bad experience, I think. When my wife goes shopping I never accompany her. She brings everything back to the house to show me and the next day she takes it all back to change it,’ he said. ‘But ladies are ladies and we could not do without them.’
‘My brother, who has been married four times, once said to me: “Couldn’t they have invented something better than women?” ‘
At this the Captain laughed so heartily that he almost fell off his bar stool. When he had recovered and we had ordered more drinks, he became serious.
‘It is about the ladies I wish to consult you, Mr Durrell,’ he said. ‘As you know, in four days’ time we will be crossing the Equator and we must have a Crossing the Line Ceremony. It will be expected. Now, if you have young people on board, the ceremony normally takes place by the swimming pool, where people are “shaved” by Father Neptune and there is a lot of horseplay and frivolity and it ends up with the participants being ducked in the pool.’
He paused and took a sip of his drink.
‘I don’t think our ladies would take very kindly to that,’ I said tentatively.
The Captain’s eyes grew wide with horror.
‘Oh, Mr Durrell, I could not suggest it for one minute. No, no, no,’ he said. ‘Our ladies are — well — shall we say a little too adult for such behaviour. No, what I have organized is a small banquet. Our chef is really very good when he has the right ingredients and so I have sent him ashore to purchase whatever is needed, fruit, fresh meat and so on. We will of course drink champagne with it. Do you think they will approve of that?’
‘My dear Captain, you know they will be enchanted,’ I said. ‘You have done so much to make this voyage a happy and memorable one for them, and you must know that they are all desperately in love with you.’
The Captain turned the delicate pink of a rose petal.
‘Furthermore,’ I said, ‘in their eyes you can do no wrong and so anything you do will be a fabulous success. The only trouble will be if your wife ever gets to hear about eleven ladies all being in love with you simultaneously.
The Captain turned an even deeper shade of pink.
‘Fortunately, my wife is a very intelligent woman,’ he said. ‘She has always said to me, “Siegfried, if you fancy another woman that will be all right, but point her out to me so that I may kill her before you start your flirtation.”’
‘An eminently sensible lady,’ I said. ‘Let us drink to her.’ We did, and then went in to lunch.
After the chilled soup with the remains of some fish floating in it that looked as though it had either been undescribed by science or been rejected by it, the Captain put down his spoon, patted his mouth with his napkin, cleared his throat and leaned forward.
‘Mr Durrell, there is something else I would value your opinion on since you are a writer of renown.’
Inwardly I groaned. Was he going to ask me to read and comment on his life story — Fifty Years at Sea, or Typhoons Ahoy?
‘Yes, Captain,’ I said, dutifully, ‘what is that?’
‘I thought that as well as the banquet for our ladies they should have something more lasting to remind them of the event, so I wondered if you, as a writer, would think these suitable.’
He placed on the white table-cloth one of the pieces of paper he had been looking at in the bar, which looked like the sort of archaic parchment which legal documents were written on in the Middle Ages. On each one had been beautifully engraved in the most elegant of copperplate handwriting the name of the ship, its destination, the date on which it was going to cross the line and lastly, with a great flourish of curlicues, the passenger’s name. They were most exquisitely executed.
‘Captain,’ I said in admiration, ‘they are wonderful. The ladies will love them. Which talented member of your crew did them?’
The Captain blushed again.
‘I did them myself,’ he said modestly. ‘I do a little calligraphy in my spare time.’
‘Well, they are truly magnificent and the ladies will be overwhelmed,’ I assured him.
‘I am
glad,’ he said, ‘I want this to be a happy last voyage for me.’
‘Last voyage?’ I questioned.
‘Yes, when we finish the voyage I am retiring,’ he said.
‘But you look too young to retire,’ I protested.
‘Thank you,’ he said, giving a courtly little bow, ‘but I am at retirement age. I have been at sea since I was sixteen years old and, although I have loved the life, I shall be glad to give it up. Apart from anything else, it has been hard on my dear wife. It is the wives who suffer, particularly if there are no children, for they get lonely.’
‘Where are you going to retire to?’ I asked.
His face lit up with excitement.
‘In the north of my country there is a small but beautiful bay and a very small town called Spitzen,’ he said. ‘My wife and I purchased a house there some years ago. It is right on the rocks, outside the town on the edge of the bay. It is very beautiful. Do you know I can lie in my bed and watch the seagulls flying past my window? I can hear them calling and the sound of the sea. When we have bad weather the wind hoots round the house like an owl, and the big waves crash like thunder on the shore. It is very exciting.’
‘And what will you do?’ I asked.
A dreamy expression crossed his pixie face.
‘I shall practise my calligraphy,’ he said softly, and it was almost as if he were hypnotized by the thought. ‘My calligraphy needs attention. I shall paint and I shall play the flute and try to make up to my wife for her years of loneliness. You understand, I do none of these things well — except perhaps the last — but I enjoy trying. They give me pleasure even if badly done, and I think pleasure soothes the mind.’
I raised my glass.
‘I drink to your long and happy retirement,’ I said.
He gave me one of his quaint, old-fashioned bows.
‘Thank you. I hope it will be so. But the most important thing is that it will delight my dear, patient wife,’ and he gave me a radiant, unselfish smile.
I went to my cabin for a siesta and was presently apprised of our ladies’ return by the pattering of feet and the banging of cabin doors and shrill cries of ‘Lucinda, did you have that basket I bought — the red and green one? Oh, thank the Lord, I thought I’d left it in the taxi,’ and ‘Mabel, I do think you bought too much fruit — those bananas are going to go as rotten as a politician in no time.’
Later, over cocktails, I was shown, in great secrecy, the five sweaters that had been purchased for the Captain. The reason for this plethora of garments was that the ladies fell out over colours once again since (which I should have foreseen) they could not get oatmeal. I was asked to judge which was best and so found myself in a situation that Solomon would not have envied. I picked my way out of this potential minefield by telling the ladies that the Captain had vouchsafed to me that this was his last voyage. Long trembling cries of lamentation filled the saloon as if I was surrounded by a flock of kookaburras deprived of their young. How could this be? He was such an up square bloke. He was so courteous and cultured. He was the sort of foreigner you would entertain in your own home. He was a real gent, one of those real gents what is a real gent if you know what I mean. You would have thought we were discussing the removal of Nelson from the fleet before Trafalgar. I gave everyone more drinks and asked for peace, a hush. I am not quite sure, but I think I said, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’
Everyone calmed down at the familiar sound of this old platitude and waited expectantly. I said that the Captain and his wife were going to their wonderful house in the north where, in the spring, the flowers were a tapestry of colour and the birds sang like a heavenly choir. But in winter storms lashed the region, lightning fluttered and flashed in the sky like white veins, thunder crashed louder than a million potatoes being dumped on a wooden floor and the waves curled and crashed on the shore like steel blue lions with white frothy manes attacking the land. The ladies were riveted by my excessive imagery. What man, I asked rhetorically, in those circumstances, could do without five pullovers in five different colours? No man could live. Five pullovers for that region were essential for survival. The ladies were entranced. They had, by their united wisdom, saved their hero from hypothermia and so they all had another drink to celebrate.
Two days later the Captain, meticulous as always, had little printed cards placed in each cabin informing us that there would be a special Crossing of the Line dinner party that night. This threw the ladies into a turmoil of excitement. Clothes were taken out, discussed, discarded, reinstated, washed, ironed, discarded once more when some more suitable trophy was suddenly found lurking in the bottom of the suitcase. Make-up flew between cabins like a rainbow. The smell of eleven different scents competing with each other was as fearsome as a forest fire. The squeaks of delight or dismay, the moans of ultimate despair and the cries of joy that echoed from cabin to cabin were as complex and heartwarming as listening to a choir of birds in a forest at dawn. Eventually, every hair carefully washed and rigidly in place, every eyebrow carefully demarcated, each eyelid under a cloak of blue or green, each mouth lipsticked in crimson glory, each bust and each buttock regimented into place, the ladies were ready.
Assembling in the bar, they were greeted by a panoply of ice buckets with champagne lurking in each one. The twittering of delight at this opulence was wonderful.
Then the hero of the hour made his appearance, immaculate in his best uniform, white as any summer cloud, carrying a large cardboard box. When his admiring fans had finished twittering, the Captain opened the box and from it extracted a gardenia for each lady and a red carnation for me. I was thankful I had taken the trouble to unearth my ancient dinner jacket and get the steward to press it into some semblance of decency. The ladies, of course, were overwhelmed. Nobody, not even a straight bloke like what you sometimes come across in Australia, had ever given them gardenias. They kept smelling each other’s gardenias and going into rapture over the scent. Then the champagne was poured and there was much girlish giggling and the usual complaints about bubbles up the nose. There was champagne galore, and so we were all very convivial when we went into the dining saloon for the banquet.
They had really done us proud. The white damask cloth had been decorated with fresh flowers and from somewhere they had unearthed enough cut glasses for the wine. The first course was a delicious pate. This was followed by some superb smoked salmon rolled up with a filling of cream, horseradish and dill. Then came chicken, done in a delicate wine sauce, with a delicious variety of vegetables to accompany it and those wonderful potato puffs called, appropriately enough, Perflutters. This was followed by cheese and then an enormous Bombe Surprise was brought in to excited cries of wonderment and delight. When this had been demolished and coffee was served, the Captain stood up and made a speech.
‘Ladies, Mr Durrell,’ he said, giving one of his old-fashioned, bird-like bows to us all. ‘This is a special occasion. I know that Mr Durrell who travels a great deal has crossed the line many times. But I know it is the first time you ladies have, and so your crossing from one side of the world to the other is an important moment. So we must celebrate it.’
He walked over to the big sideboard that lined one side of the dining saloon and carefully picked up the scrolls he had laboured over. He carried them to the table and piled them by his plate.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘I have prepared here, for each one of you, a document which states that you have crossed the line, and that you have crossed it on my ship. I hope you will like them.’
There was an excited murmur from his mesmerized audience.
‘So ladies,’ he said, raising his wine glass, ‘may I drink to you all, your health and happiness and thank you for making my last voyage such a pleasure.’
Smiling, he raised his glass. Then the glass flew from his hand, scattering gouts of wine on the table-cloth, and he dropped dead.
To say we were stunned would be an understatement. I had been watching his charming face as he ma
de his little speech and his eyes had just suddenly glazed over. There was no wince as of great pain. The only indication there was anything wrong with him was the spilt wine and the fact that he fell over sideways, stiff as a log of wood, and crashed on to the floor at the feet of his Chief Officer and the purser, who were standing to one side, ready to give out the scrolls. Both of them, dumbfounded, stood there like statues. I turned to Mrs Malrepose, sitting on my right, by far the most down to earth and practical of the ladies.
‘Get everyone to the bar. We’ll attend to the Captain,’ I said.
She gave me an anguished look, but nodded. I got round the table with all speed. The Chief Officer and the purser were still standing there with their dead Captain at their feet as though they were on parade.
‘Loosen his collar,’ I said. The Chief Officer gave a start, as if waking suddenly. The Captain was wearing an old-fashioned starched collar with a gold stud, so it was some seconds before it became free. There was no throb from the vein in his neck, nor was there any flutter under the fragile basketwork of his ribs. I stood up.
‘He’s dead,’ I said, somewhat unnecessarily.
The Chief Officer looked at me.
‘What do we do?’ he asked, a man regimented to take orders and not control.
‘Look,’ I said, exasperated, ‘if a captain on a British merchant ship drops dead, I believe that the chief officer becomes captain. So you’re now captain.’
He stared at me, his eyes expressionless.
‘But what do we do?’ he asked.
‘For God’s sake,’ I said angrily, ‘you’re captain, so you tell us what to do.’
‘What would you suggest?’ he asked.
I looked at him.
‘Firstly,’ I said, ‘I would get your poor ex-captain up off the floor and carried to his cabin. Next, I would strip him and wash him and lay him out decently. Then I suppose you have to get in touch with Head Office and tell them what’s happened. Meanwhile, I will deal with the ladies.’